Thursday, June 20, 2013

Recipe originally posted in August 2006, fully revised and updated with a new photo in June 2013.

The first time I cooked this delicious dish was in August 2006 in Edinburgh. I had some Estonian visitors from Cambridge. Trying to stay close to our Nordic roots, I had boiled some potatoes (the staple back home) and scoured the Swedish Arla site for recipes. This recipe for klassisk sommarkyckling aka Classic Summer Chicken caught my eye and, with small adaptations, was served to my friends. They liked it, as did I. The creamy-mustardy sauce was especially delicious, and dill added a very summery touch indeed (the original recipe used chives, which also sounds lovely).

That was seven years ago - and I still cook this to my family every now and then. I'm especially fond of the crispy bacon garnish, which complements the mild chicken and the creamy mustard sauce beautifully.

Heat the butter in a heavy-bottomed frying pan. Add chicken fillets and brown on both sides (7-8 minutes in total).
Pour over the cream, add garlic cloves and mustard. Cover the pan and simmer on a medium heat for about 10 minutes.
Add the chopped dill, season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, fry chopped bacon on a dry non-stick pan until golden brown and crispy. Transfer onto a sheet of kitchen paper to drain off excess fat.

To serve, place chicken fillets on heated plates, pour some sauce on top and sprinkle with crispy bacon.

* A chicken escalope (also called 'scallop') is a thin piece of chicken breast meat that's been pounded to make it thinner. If you cannot find them at your butcher or local supermarket, then it is really easy to make them yourself. Place a large chicken breast on your chopping board and cut it horizontally into two. If your chicken breasts are on the small side, then cover with clingfilm/plastic wrap and simply pound them with a rolling pin until about 3-4 mm thick.

Looks good! Glad you made the leap of faith with chicken and bacon! I absolutely love the combination. As plain chicken tends to be a bit bland unless heavily spiced, the juicy tastiness of bacon is just the right thing to liven it up.

One good (and British) way to roast a whole chicken in the oven is to cover it with strips of bacon. The bacon protects the chicken from drying up and prevents its surface from charring - and also gets lovely and crisp in the process. Optimally, the chicken is put in the oven without bacon and the strips are laid on it when the chicken is approximiately halfway done.

Kalyn - thanks! Note that the original recipe used chives instead of dill, and heated the cucumber slices through at the end (i.e. included them in the sauce). How would it score on your South Beach Diet?

Pam, oh please do! I'm sure you can get some good bacon in Switzerland to go with the chicken.

Pippurimylly - I'm happy to have leaped, too:) I've seen the bacon covered turkey here in the UK, but it would surely work with chicken, too. And I have sometimes grabbed chicken & bacon sarnie for lunch. Just hadn't combined these two in my kitchen yet..

Clivia - I agree, Arla is good. I guess some 5 per cent of the recipes in my Estonian language database are from Arla. The dishes are very suitable for an Estonian palate, too, which is probably the reason why I rely on Arla so much.

I’m including this recipe today in a feature on my blog I call South Beach Recipes of the Week, where I spotlight South Beach friendly recipes I find on other great blogs. It includes your photo (with a photo credit for you, of course) and a link to the recipe. Please let me know if you have any concerns about how I’ve done this.

Pille, just wanted to let you know that I've tried this - being a Swede living in Amsterdam, finding this (Swedish) recipe on an Estonian expat blog in Scotland I felt I had to close the circle somehow. It was absolutely delicious and my take on it is on http://mums.blogsome.com/2006/08/23/sommarkyckling/ . (I am guessing that if your Swedish is good enough to decipher the original recipe you might also be able to decipher the credit you're given. ;))